Volume 10 Surah 12 - 15 - Enjoy Islam

Al-Ĥijr | GREAT UNIVERSAL EXPANSE
earth. Hence, the scene appears massive, grand, majestic.
But the verse then refers to human beings. Your livelihood is placed on earth ‘for
you’, and also for ‘those whom you do not have to provide for’. They all survive on the
provisions God gives them. Humans constitute only one of the countless
communities that live on earth. This community does not provide sustenance to any
other. It is God that provides for it and for other types of creation. But God grants it
more of His bounty as He places for its service other communities and types of
creation which live on the provisions given to them by God, without placing any
responsibility or burden on man.
A Clear Plan for All Creation
In fact, the provisions given to every community are determined by God,
according to His will. He grants them as He pleases, at the time He chooses, and in
accordance with the laws He has set in operation: “There is not a thing but with Us are
its storehouses; and We send it down only in accordance with a defined measure.” (Verse 21)
No creature owns, or has power over, anything. The resources of everything are with
God in His supreme realm. He grants it to His creation, in their respective worlds,
according to a defined measure. Nothing is given or provided arbitrarily.
We have here a precise statement, “There is not a thing but with Us are its storehouses;
and We send it down only in accordance with a defined measure.” (Verse 21) Its import
becomes apparent as man’s knowledge increases and becomes more advanced. The
more he knows about the universe and how it is made and operates, the better he
understands the Qur’ānic statement. The meaning of the term, ‘storehouses’,
becomes clearer after man has discovered the nature of the elements which form the
material world, and their composition. Man knows that the basic ‘storehouses’ of
water, for example, are the oxygen and hydrogen atoms. The storehouses of
provisions we have in the form of green plants and vegetation include the nitrogen
which is present in the air, carbon and the oxygen that form carbon dioxide, and the
rays of the sun. Examples like these are numerous, giving a clear picture of the
import of the expression, “God’s storehouses”, of which man has come to know much,
but this much remains only a little of what there is.
Of the things that God sends in accordance with defined measure are winds and
water: “We send forth winds heavily loaded, then We send down water from the skies for you
to drink. You are not the ones who store it up.” (Verse 22) The Arabic term, lawāqiĥ,
which signifies heavily loaded has been interpreted by some according to the scientific
meaning of ‘fertilizing’, referring to the fact that the winds carry the pollen from
some plants or trees to fertilize the female ones. But this does not seem to fit with the
text here. We have to remember that the Qur’ān is very meticulous in drawing its
262